You could try a Persona Game (or the new Metaphor) These games are build on your relationships with the other characters. They think of you, they contact you often on their own because they want to do something with you. You just have to like to read. Those things are half JRPG, half Visual Novel.
So I’m not sure what might make you not feel lonely or anxious. Things like how directly you control the characters with you could he factors I imagine, so I’m just going to list a bunch of things:
A shorter one, but Star Wars Republic Commando. You’re a commando unit and work as one.
Dragon’s Dogma, either Dark Arisen or the new sequel.
Mass Effect series.
I don’t know if Earth Defence Force would be like that or not, at the end of the day your NPC allies could be hit or miss (literally, depending on the weapons you use).
Not sure how you feel about party-based RPGs, but there are tons of them.
I’m wondering if RTS games with campaigns would feel right as well. StarCraft’s campaigns have a lot of people constantly talk to/around you.
The Lego games?
Stardew Valley?
Can’t really think of indie games at the moment.
Games I haven’t played so I don’t know if they apply: Persona? Space Marine games?
Midnight Suns is perfect for you. It’s part team tactical deck building combat, part superhero relationship simulator. You alternate between fighting evil as part of a squad of heroes (the DLC includes Deadpool) and spending time hanging out and talking with other heroes. And it’s just a phenomenal game all around.
May I recommend taking it a step further and going for games that have no cycle in them at all? That is, finite games that you can play and actually finish, for good. That’s what I’ve been looking for a lot lately.
Some recommendations:
The Talos Principle (puzzles with a story)
Outer Wilds (best to go in blind, read absolutely nothing about it, not even the steam description)
CrossCode (fast paced fun combat and a cool story and characters. Somewhat grindy but still finite)
Beacon Pines (short and sweet visual novel)
Chants of Sennaar (language translation game, surprisingly fun and satisfying)
Outer Wilds is a gem of a 3D first-person indie game. Other games might have you find required items so you can progress (like Pokemon or Zelda games), but in this game it’s all about the knowledge you learn while playing (like Tunic). You explore, learn, and puzzle solve. By looking up anything about the game, or by looking up a solution to a puzzle, you essentially lock yourself out of experiencing that piece of content. It’s all about the journey.
It’s a game you can only really play once, but it is so worth it. It’s my favorite video game and I wish I could forget everything about it so I can play it again for the first time.
Well… Without spoiling anything I would say, you are a member of an alien species on another planet. You are also an aspiring astronaut about to take your first journey into space. Let’s just say your journey is quite remarkable.
Chants of Sennaar is absolutely one of my favorite games. It’s one of the few games I’ve played where the mechanics of the game and the themes of the game were in perfect harmony.
Not every game needs a story or campaign you can finish to be enjoyable. Playing random skirmishes in Age of Empires 2 or Supreme Commander can be loads of fun. Civilization 5 has scenarios that I suspect most players don’t even know exist (also, you can play Unciv for free). You can pick up and put down much like you’d do to boardgames.
Then there’s “infinite” games like Cities Skyline, RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, Satisfactory. It’s ok to want once and done games, but games that you want to replay when they lack any mtx or dark patterns speaks something about your enjoyment
Definitely, not disagreeing with that. I’ve played plenty of those games too. I just find that “enjoyment per hour” is actually better with shorter, finite games. But I also find myself spending a lot of time playing Civ or Stellaris haha
i don’t know when or how it happened but once i realised FOMO was being used against players regularly and aggressively i just- stopped caring. Oh a limited time special one week offer especially for me now and never again? Too bad i just launched the game and have no intention of buying your “newbie pack”. Oh my event limited time items? Dang, those look expensive, anyway i’m happy with my normal looking armour and normal looking tools/guns cheers
& i only ever buy cheap cosmetics. If your game is bad and grindy when i play it without throwing money at the screen then your game is bad and grindy & i will tell all my friends about that experience
Yeah, that’s the attitude I take with this shit now.
I play a stupid colour matching game on my iPad that’s almost scientifically designed to try and rinse money out of users’ pockets, but I’ve got to a place where I see the offers and last chances and know that even if I did pay for a few boosts or power ups, it’s not going to bring me enlightenment.
That’s not to shit on OP’s point, mind. Microtransactions really are a menace, preying on those who are least able to ignore them, who are often least able to afford them. But it’s a world we’ve kinda made by not wanting to pay for games.
That said, how much is WoW these days? Paying a monthly fee AND getting bombarded with ways to spend more money is straight-up cunty.
Super cool photo, but does this technically count as astronomy? Isn’t astronomy “a camera on (usually) on earth, pointed up into space”, not the other way around?
The science which treats of the celestial bodies, of their magnitudes, motions, distances, periods of revolution, eclipses, constitution, physical condition, and of the causes of their various phenomena.
A treatise on, or text-book of, the science.
From the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
It’s refreshing seeing your list since people often blame gachas nowadays, but MMOs were the issue originally, it’s just that other genres took a lesson from MMOs so now we have way more grinding options and it gets tiresome.
I really appreciate that because someone was over here trying to convince me to play a gacha game claiming that it’s not that bad. Some people just don’t get it
Gacha games are like magicians. You know they are total bullshit and there is no “magic”, yet some people still look at it and think there is something else going on.
Total waste of money, I don’t understand how people get sucked into those things.
I cannot tell you how much better my mental health has been since I stopped playing Apex Legends, Overwatch, and Rocket League. I never had anything against the gameplay of these games but the microtransactions and battle passes were just straight up toxic. After a couple weeks you simply don’t give a shit anymore and it’s amazing. I see my roommate playing these games until 3 AM every day because he has to do his daily challenges for 4 different games. He’ll be so pissed off that he can barely speak as he powers through game after game to get them done so he can go to bed. And in hindsight, that’s probably what I used to look like back when I played those games.
Apex Legends … the microtransactions and battle passes were just straight up toxic
My friend bought Battlepass for Apex once because it had a pretty decent skin in it. Then, he was straight up *PISSED * when next season they had the most ridiculous, incredible looking skin ever. He felt like he had to purchase it again that season, and was bitter he spent money the previous season for something so mediocre. That kind of thought process is just awful. These games lure you right into it.
Apex battle passes have always given you enough credit to buy the next season’s pass. I’ve been playing since launch, I’ve completed all battle passes save for maybe 4, and I’ve spent a total of $10 on the game.
Until they start charging only money for the battle passes. I never even used 80% of the skins I got on the battle passes anyway. I just wanted them so I didn’t not have them. As someone that has over 2,000 hours in Apex, I’m so glad I jumped ship. The grass was very green on the other side.
Funny you should mention that. They attempted to do precisely this (only buy the BP with real money) a few months ago. The player base revolted, and they walked it back to the way things were.
He’ll be so pissed off that he can barely speak as he powers through game after game to get them done so he can go to bed.
If you want to help him get out of that, give him a burn or two every once in a while: “How are your second, third and fourth jobs coming along?” - “With all that work you do, you should ask for a raise!”
Hopefully he’ll realize he’s not playing, but working, and give up on that. Hopefully.
My 80-year-old mother is stil hooked on Hay Day (2012 Farmville clone). She doesn’t alarm-clock overnight events any more, but that could be because she can’t sleep through the night now. Got a team of other old ladies around the world for contests, and it’s right on the edge of where I think it’s great that she’s got something to keep her engaged versus might need an addiction intervention.
I’m not usually one for those types of games but I had a lot of fun with the player economy of Hayday. You don’t even need to do any farming, there were always desperate players selling low and buying high lol
WoW auction house feelings right there. Dunno how it is nowadays, but I remember that back on Battle for Azeroth, that was the only way to get the 5 million gold for a super exclusive mount
I’m glad I’ve had a few epiphanies over my gaming time that have resulted in no desire to spend any money on P2W or content skipping.
First one was in the first Turok game on N64. I was playing normally but at some point looked up the cheat codes for things like unlock all weapons, unlimited ammo, and unlocking all levels. There was one weapon that you needed to collect hidden pieces of from each level, and then you only got 3 shots with it that would pretty much AoE clear an area. There was another gun that you’d only find 2 shots of ammo for at a time that was similar. I had fun for a bit running around and shooting those guns at will, but after that it was hard to get motivated to play the game without the cheats because I knew the big weapons were basically just temporary consumables, which meant I’d probably never use them while trying to ration them for moments they’d be most useful. Using those cheat codes ruined the game for me.
The second epiphany was after raiding for a while in WoW and thinking about the loot motivation. It was a circular motivation: you get better loot so that you can raid more to get even better loot. If the loot was the main motivation, then it was pointless because the loot didn’t serve any purpose outside of the game. So it only made sense to do raiding because I enjoyed the process, not because of the rewards. And this applied to most reward mechanisms in games. Taking that logic just a bit further made me realize that P2W is actually paying money to avoid playing a game and short circuit right to getting the rewards, which was kinda pointless when the rewards were meant to improve the experience of playing the game. Either a) you don’t want to play the game at all, or b) you don’t get as much satisfaction from using the better loot or whatever because you skipped the part where you had to do it without those rewards.
And then the last one is finding PvP less satisfying when the game mechanics give significant advantages based on either time spent grinding or paying money to avoid grinding. Did I just win because of my skills or because I’ve acquired better gear? Did I just lose because the other player outplayed me or because they got better gear? And I didn’t even want to give any satisfaction to those who just paid money to win and don’t worry about what it does or doesn’t say about their skills. It’s similar to the line of thought when you know cheating is possible… Did I get beat by someone skilled enough to aim better or someone using an aim bot?
Comparing P2W to cheating is spot on, especially as these are much more heavily advertised and used in PvP games. What really annoys me is when these players, or similars that never go after equivalent players, feel all superior despite showing zero skill
On WoW, I remember playing a few times on instant 255 private servers, back in 2007-2010. It felt so damn pointless to me, especially as the raids still needed you to make a raid group. I enjoyed a portion of the grind, even as a mostly solo player.
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Aktywne